Thus, along with considerations on the life of words, as it appears in the evolution of language across the centuries, the poetic image, assa a mathematician would say, presents us with a sort of differential of this evolution. A great verse can have a great influence on the soul of a language. It awakens images that had been effaced, at the same time that it confirms the unforeseeable nature of speec. And if we render speech unforeseeable, is this not an apprenticeship of freedom? What delight the poetic imagination takes in making game of censors! Time was when the poetic arts codified the licenses to be permitted. Contemporary poetry, however, has introduced fredom in the very body of the language. As a result, poetry appears as a phenomenon of freedom.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. xxiii
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